Monday, October 12, 2009

Rain Washes Away

Rain Washes Away

And I’m not talking metaphorically here. I literally mean that rain washes and rinses things away. Just think about how in Southern California, we don’t see rain from sometime in early March all the way until October. So Cal weather is pretty consistent that way.

So during those months, consider how much dirt and dust builds up on roofs of houses, how much spit and grime ends up on sidewalks, dog poop on grass and in parks, and for that matter, wild animals are always relieving themselves in the mountains.

Think of how much mud on the road from cars, how much old, dead brush in the wilderness and how much cosmic dust on all of the leaves of plants and trees gets washed away. Consider all of the smog that gets cleaned out of the air.

And all of this during a heavy rain, washes through the canyons, to catch basins, through gutters and into storm drains that move into flood control channels, and eventually, where all the water around here seems to end up, down the slick concrete LA River towards Long Beach where it is all released into the sea.

Did you ever really look at those flood control channels (our family calls them “washes) and how brown and muddy colored the turbulent water is? That's all of the filth and dirt moving swiftly out of the urban areas.

I always look forward to a hard rain. My hope is always for a long, hard series of downpours that lasts for days. And maybe I am indeed getting metaphorical here, but its always so clean feeling after heavy rains. Yes, there are areas of torn up asphalt and places where hillsides have given way poring mud where it should be. But after a good rain, it looks, smells and feels so clean.